The Bullen's Journey of Adoption…

Menu

June Trips

We had great opportunities to visit Mathieu this past month. Peyton went down at the first of the month to take our pastor and our mission’s coach to see Haiti and what’s going on down there. We recently had a family, and close friends- Josh, Brittany, and Sharles, from our church to move to Haiti as long-term missionaries so it was a good time to see them and support their ministries there. Peyton was able to spend a few days with Mathieu.

Then Peyton and I led a team of 12 down for a week at the end of June. It was great for the three of us to be together again! It had been over a year since that has happened. Brittany has been working hard on teaching all the kids at Mathieu’s Home English. I could tell a huge difference. He can count to 10 in English and say other words too like “I’m hungry or I’m thirsty!” We could tell such a huge difference, and it made it so much easier to bond and communicate. We also were refreshed on our very basic Creole. The parts we couldn’t understand, we had our good friend Flore to translate. I had the privilege to help teach one of the English classes to the kids one day. Mathieu was such a good listener and was taking notes. You could tell he was really paying attention. It made us so proud.

No, unfortunately, we don’t have any updates on the actual adoption process. There have been several people to say to us that they will help us. They will see what they can do to speed things along. In each situation the communication goes dim, and then we never hear from them again. This has been our sign that for some reason God wants us to go this alone. So here we are, trucking along a path that we’re not even sure we’re on. The only thing we do know, is that if God wants Mathieu home, he’ll bring him home. If that was never God’s intention for Mathieu to live here, then we will faithfully be his parents from here. We are still a family no matter what. While in Haiti, we studied Genesis 12 which is where God tells Abram to leave his country, his people, and his father’s household. Abram obeys and leaves as God commanded. But only a few verses away, Abram starts to doubt God and feels that he needs to take matters into his own hands when they enter Egypt. Abram tells his wife to lie and say she is his sister so they won’t kill him. God spares him in the end of the chapter. We have found ourselves so many times doubting God in this process. We were quick to obey and depend on God as we started the grueling adoption process, but now we sometimes feel we need to take matters into our own hands. We want to pitch a fit and say God, we obeyed you on something that was never in “our plan” now why is it so hard? We pray that God’s plan is for Mathieu to be here with us, but for now, we will be patient and wait which is just so hard. It breaks our heart each time we have to leave him, each family hug we give as we all 3 cry, and each prayer where we beg God to bring him home. We know this is not outside of God’s control, and he is teaching us through all of this. May we never forget these lessons!

Our Family Journey

Welcome to MHIH. We are Elizabeth and Peyton Bullen. In February 2011 while on a mission in Haiti, we met a 3 year old orphaned boy. A short time later we began the adopion process of bringing him home to Tennessee. We created this blog to keep everyone updated on the progress. Thank you for your support!